The Indigenous Choreographers at Riverside (ICR) Gathering brings Indigenous dance artists, Indigenous studies scholars, and dance studies scholars to campus to connect, discuss, and share work. We gather on the current and ancestral land of the Cahuilla, Tongva, Serrano, Luiseño (Payómkawichum), Cupeño and Kumeyaay Peoples, where the University of California, Riverside is located to look at ways Indigenous dance, in many diverse forms and locations, engages Indigenous knowledges, and at the import of these articulations.

ICR 2018 Dance Artist Focus: Our highlighted guest artist this year is Grupo Sotz’il, who will be in residence at UCR from April 27 through May 7. Grupo Sotz’il is an eight-member ensemble of young Kaqchikel and Mam multidisciplinary artists dedicated to researching, creating and promoting Mayan knowledge and arts. Founded in El Tablón, Sololá, Guatemala in the year 2000 by the Tat Lisandro Guarcax (1978–2010), Grupo Sotz’il’s art reflects the present and envisions the future, with firm roots in the wisdom and knowledge of their ancestors.

Grupo Sotz’il’s participation in this year’s ICR is an enactment of the group’s desire to re-activate the long-standing connection between Indigenous peoples of the four directions, a multivalent circuit of exchange that predates the colonial imposition of borders. This commitment to transnational Indigenous solidarity has taken Grupo Sotz’il to almost every continent, where they have engaged in reciprocal sharing of knowledge and story. Selected by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ prestigious National Dance Project Touring Award, this is Grupo Sotz’il’s first visit to Cahuilla, Tongva, Serrano, Luiseño (Payómkawichum), Cupeño and Kumeyaay lands and their first time participating in the ICR. With the opportunity afforded by the ICR to dialogue–through words and movement–with artists and scholars from throughout Abya Yala/Turtle Island, Grupo Sotz’il looks forward to new connections toward future collaborations and forms of solidarity.

Grupo Sotz’il will present Uk’u’x Ulew, Heart of Earth. In this 60-minute performance of xajoj q’ojom (music/dance), fire, water, earth, and air interact in harmony and conflict. From their collusion and collision, K’aslemal, life, is born. The exuberance reaches beyond the borders of the performance space, but Tz’i’—the hound that embodies the word—signals danger. Grupo Sotz’il will present Uk’u’x Ulew, which borders between ritual and performance, at UCR’s Community Garden on Saturday, May 5, at the end of Medicine Ways. They will also dance a 20 minute excerpt of this work on Thursday, May 3, as part of “Arts Walk”, followed by performed responses from invited artists and a discussion in both English and Spanish.

ICR 2018 Writers’ Workshop: This year’s ICR will include a day-long gathering of writers contributing to a new anthology on “Critical Indigenous Dance Studies” that we are proposing. The day will begin with short “key point/generative question” presentations from those contributing to the anthology, who have circulated first drafts of potential pieces to one another. Responses from one another and UCR faculty, and discussion around overlapping and emerging ideas will follow, as we move toward reworking or refining the anthology’s structure and focus. The day is geared around this specific project, but is open to observers interested in the field. (Please RSVP to save a space if you’d like to attend; see link below).

There are several other public events this year, including a screening of work by Sotz’il and other participating dance artists Friday, April 27, and music and dance workshops at UCR. See the schedule below for details.

Followed by Dialogue on Process with UCR faculty, including Michelle Raheja, Maria Firmino-Castillo, Jose Reynoso and Jacqueline Shea Murphy, and with artists Louise Potiki Bryant and Grupo Sotz’il dance and music ensemble members.

An international, interdisciplinary, gathering of scholars and dance-makers writing about Indigenous dance. Invited contributing writers will offer brief key points from their recent work, followed by open time to identity and discuss emergent ideas.

Uk’u’x Ulew is a multisensorial Maya dance-ritual. Its interactive choreography provokes embodied reflection on the environmental/political/spiritual dimensions of our planetary crisis—stressing human complicity while restoring reciprocity with our ecological matrix, or Uk’u’x Ulew. A multidisciplinary dance work performed with live music, Uk’u’x Ulew was created collectively by Grupo Sotz’il’s eight Kaqchikel and Mam Maya dancer-musicians and dramaturg.

Indigenous Choreographers at Riverside is presented by the UCR Department of Dance and UCR Native American Students Programs in conjunction with ARTSBlock/Culver Center of the Arts, with additional support provided by the UCR College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, UCR Native Student Programs, the Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs, the California Center for Native Nations, the Center for Ideas and Society, and UCR Departments of Dance, Hispanic Studies, Music, Theatre, Film and Digital Production, Ethnic Studies, and Global Studies.

The presentation of Uk’u’x Ulew is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.